chronicles of a crunchy hippie

Tag Archives: planner

Today was my first day back to school for the spring semester and aiiiieeeee I was unprepared. I made the mistakegood decision choice to begin A Game of Thrones yesterday.The conflict here is that I do not want to stop reading and I unfortunately had to get up this morning. Here’s a quick summary of things that happened since my alarm went off this morning:

I snoozed the alarm for a solid 30 minutes.

I opened the door to my classroom to let kids in literally as the tardy bell rang.

I forgot to eat my lunch until the kids starting coming back from their lunch.

I drank a large coffee, a large diet coke, and a whole bunch of ice cold water and I still never woke up.

Alas, not all hope is lost because I made a bunch of resolutions this year and I’m going to stick to them. Don’t laugh. I have a plan.

I’ve been watching tons of bullet journal videos and pinning bullet journal pictures on the inter webs and I have been inspired by how pretty and creative things are, but to be frank bullet journaling suck.

I’ve tried bullet journaling before and it just felt too permanent to me. It was hard to just write something down on a page and say to myself, “This is permanent. I cannot move this.”

Enter the arc planner system. You can buy the premade planner section, but you can also add a bunch of lined or grid paper to make your own pages just like bullet journals. Let me repeat that jUsT lIkE tHe BuLlET jOuRnAlS!

Yes. This is bullet journaling for the commitment phobic. I love the way that I can just move a page or easily take it out and toss it in the recycling bin when I inevitably mess up.

I personally like the Create365 My Happy Planner Brand. Here’s the basic layout:

As you can see, this is the weekly spread. There is space for weekly top three goals, notes, and 3 squares for each day. I like to use the top square for AM, the middle square for PM, and then I like to use a stamper to make a to do list for the day.

I really try to prioritize my tasks and not go over the six spaces provided so I don’t get overwhelmed and decide to take a nap instead.

The biggest trouble with the resolutions most folks make is that they are vague. Exercise more. Read more. Lose weight. How much is more? If I exercise sporadically a time or two a month that is technically more than the none I did over the last six months, but that’s not going to get me closer to the goal of being healthy or fit. Also, the idiom “Out of sight, out of mind” is extremely accurate. If you aren’t reminded while still forming new habits you’re going to forget them faster than your college boyfriend.

This year instead of just writing my resolutions down in my planner where I can see them I am tracking them! It makes it into a fun little game. There is space on here to track my savings, my grades, weight loss, and my most favorite of all…

My bookshelf tracker! I already wrote in the two books I am working on right now, but how cute is this? It’s going to be so fun filling in names and coloring in books as the year progresses.

I have separate trackers for my “healthy habits”: enough servings of fruit, veggies, grains, legumes, etc. a.k.a. the vegetarian food groups. I am also tracking when I wash my face, brush my teeth, take my medicine, exercise, and so on. I’ve had a tendency in the past to get lazy and miss things that I need to do. There’s also the yoga tracker.

Pair these movable pages with an erasable pen and boom! I can make changes all the time as needed.

So that’s it. That’s how I’m keeping track of goals this year. Did I miss anything? How do you keep your resolutions and stay organized? What tricks do you use to help you achieve your goals? Is there an ultimate planner system that I’ve just got to try when this one runs out? Let me know in the comments.